


The Beggar of Sephravaim

by Jaydee_Faire



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Bitterness, Death, Drowning, Gen, Guilt, Illnesses, Pre-Canon, Religious Content, Siblings, a drabble that reared its ugly head and ate my entire evening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydee_Faire/pseuds/Jaydee_Faire
Summary: After arguing with his little brother, a young Dycedarg Beoulve ventures out into the woods to find him.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	The Beggar of Sephravaim

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place before the events of the game, during the Fifty Years War. "Saint Balias" was the first of Saint Ajora's disciples, martyred by the Holy Ydoran Empire. Both "Balias Tor" and "Balias Swale" are named for him.
> 
> Based on a prompt by CorpseBrigadier that got very, very out of hand.

He skidded, feet going out from underneath him, and went down hard on one wrist, a sharp spike of agony that only managed to push his panic aside for a fraction of a second before it was swallowed up again.

He had the presence of mind to suck in a breath before he hit the water, but it didn't matter: the shock of the cold gripped his chest like a vice and forced the air out of his lungs, a storm of bubbles obscuring his vision as he sank like a stone. He fought the urge to struggle, squinted past the burning in his eyes and the curtain of hair floating past his face and scanned the blue-black darkness until--

A sliver of white, the gap of skin between coat sleeve and mittened hand. He reached for it, feeling as though he reached through treacle, as if time itself were slowing down, a spell woven between the scarred fingers of a magician in gaily-colored motley, dragging him back and back and back again until the hands of the clock stilled forever on Too Late.

_Please, if you can hear me--_

They had quarreled. No; whatever quarrels a lad of seven might have were of no import to Dycedarg. Zalbaag had intruded where he shouldn't. Zalbaag had been insistent. Zalbaag had been impatient and petulant and everything a child could be in every moment where they weren't wanted, and Dycedarg had finally lost his temper.

 _"Our Lord Father is at the front. I am not going to explain that to you again. Perhaps if half the men in Eagrose hadn't followed him, there would be someone else for you to pester. Perhaps if the plague hadn't swept through Dorter, your tutor would not have fallen to it while ministering to the sick. Perhaps if Mother were here she would have the time and patience for your whining, but if you'll recall, the plague did not spare her as it spared you. As it is there is no one left here to tend to your bottomless well of wants save for me, and what_ I _want is for you turn around, walk out of that door and do not come through it again unless you are summoned!"_

It had come out of him in a frightening torrent of buttoned-down anger and frustration, gushing forth like pus from an infected wound. But unlike the result of a painful physicking, when Dycedarg turned back to his work he felt worse, not better. He'd stared down at the scattered documents, the smeared ink, the empty glass whose rounded bottom over-magnified the O in Ordallia, until his breathing began to even out. When he finally lifted his head again, his younger brother had gone.

He ought to have stood from his chair right away. He ought to have gone out into the corridor, where a young man's legs could quickly outstride a boy's and keep either of them from tumbling into misadventure. But he lingered at his desk for an hour more, toyed with his inkwell, called for wine he didn't drink. He visited the garderobe and fussed with his hair and brushed down the robes he planned to wear at mass that evening. When Bestrald came by, showing off the new shoes and collar he'd gotten as gifts, Dycedarg listened to him talk without really paying much attention, staring out the window at the knee-deep snow outside and the lines of tracks forged through it. 

One, narrower than the rest, led toward the woods.

The hour wasn't so late when Dycedarg finally began to search for his brother, ostensibly to help him wash and dress for mass. He went first to Zalbaag's rooms, then to the nursery, where Zalbaag often still slept. He even walked down to the schoolroom, which had sat empty since the summer when Father Sufur had taken ill, as if Zalbaag would be sat at the short wooden table with his slate and chalk, practicing the letters and arithmetic that he hated. 

Dycedarg returned to his own chambers, shaved, dressed for mass and then, as the sun kissed the horizon and the choir began to sing _Balias on the Hilltop Shine,_ he stepped out into the cold and started toward the distant treeline.

This wood was used for hunting, or had been when there was time to hunt hart instead of men. Foxes ran here, and pheasant, and there was a famous tale of Orenthal Beoulve slaying a boar that was still sung in the great hall by minstrels looking for Barbaneth's favor. No boar of any great size had been spotted here in decades, but Dycedarg's mind was fixed more on a deep, tranquil pond, good for swimming in the summer and fish tickling in the fall and surrounded with small, round stones perfect for a young boy to toss into the water while sulking over being shouted at on Saint Balias's feast day.

It was also known to ice over in the winter. After the turn of the year, when the coldest winds began to blow from the north, the ice would be strong enough and thick enough to walk or skate on. But the year was not yet done, and the snowfall, while deep, had been only the third in the season. If the pond was anything like the fountain in the keep gardens, the banks would be sparkling with frost and the water nearest the edge frozen hard, but the center would be clear still or, more likely, capped with a thin layer of ice that would vanish in the next day's sunlight.

Everyone knew that it took months for the pond to freeze properly. All children were warned about playing on the ice-- weren't they? By their mothers, or their fathers, or by their tutors, if any of those still remained when the weather turned cold. Zalbaag and Dycedarg had spent the last winter in mourning blacks while Barbaneth and Bestrald's father had pushed tokens about on a map of Ivalice. The year before that, they had been in the capital, before being sent west in the spring. 

Someone would have warned young Zalbaag of the danger. Someone must have told him, someone older and more experienced who did not shoo him away or shake him off when he tugged at their sleeves for their attention. Someone must have been looking after him.

Dycedarg saw the pond ahead between the trees, saw the small figure stepping carefully across it, both arms held out for balance on its slippery surface. He called out something-- 'wait,' or 'stop,' or 'come back,' it scarcely mattered-- and saw a pale, freckled face turn to look at him an instant before the ice gave way and Zalbaag disappeared below the surface.

_I beg you, I will pay any price--_

A sliver of white, just a few inches of skin between hem and hem. Dycedarg grabbed for it, missed, and grabbed again, this time seizing the fabric of the coat and digging his numb fingers in to keep from losing his grip. Lungs burning, he kicked for the surface, flailing his free arm and clawing upward as if that would bring the tiny circle of light any closer. The heavy robe he'd chosen for its generous cut and expensive brocade had turned to lead in the water; he fought free of it, shoving it clear of both of them, and forced his legs to move.

Dycedarg broke the surface of the pond, spluttered, then gasped in a grateful breath of air. Zalbaag did not. It would have been simpler to lift all of Eagrose keep over his head than to push his brother's limp, sodden body onto the ice, but he managed it, and after several tries was able to sprawl himself up onto it as well. He lay flat, trying to think only of breathing, crawling, breathing, pushing, until at last he reached the shore, frost crackling on his hair and in his eyelashes.

Zalbaag lay on his stomach at the edge of the pond, wispy ginger hair slicked to his scalp, one mitten missing, lips blue with cold. He did not gasp, or speak, or cry. He did not stir when Dycedarg shook him, nor when he was turned onto his back and his chest hammered as Dycedarg struggled to force the water from his lungs. 

"Shall we sit together at mass?" Zalbaag had asked him, hovering at his elbow and jostling Dycedarg's arm. "Will you help me light a candle for mother, and say a prayer for our Lord Father? And afterward, for the feast, I should like to sit by you again. Do you suppose Saint Balias visits Ordallia as well? And if I asked him to carry a message to Father, would you help me to write it?"

Dycedarg grit his teeth, bearing down on his brother's tiny body, and he would not think of how Zalbaag loved sweets and tourneys and pretended that he wasn't frightened of thunder any longer but hid in the larder with the cheeses when a storm came through. He would not remember that after seeing their mother buried Zalbaag had climbed into Dycedarg's bed, curling small and weeping silently as Dycedarg had held him and stroked his back. He could not allow himself to think of the churchyard or the space beside their mother's grave or the expression on their father's face when he returned home and saw another headstone beside the first. 

_Please, just breathe. Please, Saint Ajora, if you can hear my prayer, I will do anything you ask of me, I will suffer any fate. I will labor the rest of my days for nothing other than your glory. But please, let my brother live._

Zalbaag jerked, gagging, and shook with several long, wracking coughs before finally drawing a breath. He turned onto his side, retching up water, then took another deep breath that came out as a long, sobbing wail of fear and hurt. Dycedarg thought he'd never been so grateful to hear his brother cry in his life. 

It was a long walk back to the keep, and cold. Zalbaag clung to Dycedarg's hand, his sobs interspersed with coughing, and when he began to lag behind, Dycedarg picked him up and carried him as far as the courtyard, where one of the watchmen spotted them and hurried to help. 

That winter nearly saw the end of both of them: the pneumonia that followed their near-drowning in the pond had both brothers abed for weeks. It wasn't until spring, when Barbaneth finally returned, that Zalbaag was strong enough to spend the entire day out of bed without having to stop to rest. Dycedarg recovered more quickly, and spent a great deal of time with the apothecary studying the teas and tinctures that helped his brother get well. Gourdspore, a close relative of the much deadlier mossfungus, was the most instrumental in restoring Zalbaag to health. The following summer, despite Dycedarg's objections, Zalbaag began paging for one of Barbaneth's bannermen in preparation to become a squire. 

Decades later, as Dycedarg lifted a shining blue gem up to the light, he glimpsed for a moment his own reflection in its surface: soaking wet and glittering with frost, breath fogging the air as he begged for a miracle.

Shuddering, he set the gem down again.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's write some short drabbles for Christmas, I said. Just a couple of ficlets for fun, I said. I want to warm up a little before I work on my other project, I said. Two thousand words later...
> 
> "Gourdspore" is an _extremely_ thinly veiled reference to penicillin. The title of this piece is what you get when you combine the Bible, wikipedia, and 4:00AM.
> 
> MANY thanks to Atramento for the quick beta, and to CorpseBrigadier for the prompt. 
> 
> jaydeefaire.carrd.co


End file.
